Eduardo Ryo Tamaki

Contact: TamakiE(at)ceu.edu

Research Associate, German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA) & Central European University (CEU) Democracy Institute

Eduardo Ryo Tamaki is a Research Fellow at the German Institute for Global and Area Studies (GIGA), a Research Associate at the Central European University (CEU) Democracy Institute, and a Doctoral Researcher at the University of Erfurt. He is also a Lecturer at the University of Hamburg and one of the founders of Team Populism’s Young Scholars Initiative (OPUS). His expertise lies in political behavior and public opinion research, with his current work focusing on how different types of populism converge to challenge liberal democracy. In addition, he is increasingly invested in exploring the role of large language models (LLMs) and AI in political science and public opinion research. His methodological strengths are in quantitative methods, with a particular emphasis on causal inference, and his regional focus is on Latin America.

Unpacking Populism: Understanding the Influence of Populist Attitudes on Voting Behavior in Global Perspective

This research project explores the complex relationship between populist attitudes and voting behavior in different electoral contexts. It comprises two studies aimed at deepening the understanding of how populist attitudes influence voting. The first study examines the conditions under which populist attitudes are activated, focusing on individual perceptions of economic conditions and corruption as potential triggers. The second study investigates the overall importance of populist attitudes compared to other ideological factors in predicting populist voting, employing machine learning techniques to assess the substantive relevance of these attitudes. The findings aim to provide new insights into the role of populism in electoral behavior, challenging conventional assumptions and contributing to the application of machine learning in social science research.